io8 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



the girls and women and beat them with switches or 

 rods. 1 



Other examples might be added ; but without 

 lengthening the European list, let us compare these 

 with one from the utmost East. The Makura no 

 Soshi, a Japanese work written about the year 1000 A.D., 

 tells us that it was the custom, at the festival held 

 in honour of the Sahe no Kami, or phallic deities, on 

 the first full moon in every year, for the boys in the 

 Imperial Palace to go about striking the younger 

 women with the potsticks used for making gruel on the 

 occasion. This was supposed to ensure fertility. 

 Probably the practice was by no means confined to 

 the boys in the palace, for " the Japanese novelist and 

 antiquary Kioden, writing about a century ago, informs 

 us that a similar custom was at that time still practised 

 in the province of Echigo. He gives a drawing of the 

 sticks used for the purpose, of the phallic character of 

 which" in Mr. Aston 's opinion "there can be no 

 doubt." The figure reproduced by Mr. Aston would 

 certainly seem to bear out his opinion. 2 Here the occa- 

 sion, the form of the instrument and the effect attributed 

 to the blows are strikingly similar to those we have been 

 examining, and confirm the interpretation I have 

 ventured to place upon the European customs. 



Certain marriage ceremonies have the same object. 

 At Athens the segis of Athene was taken by the 

 priestess to the houses of newly married women. 3 



1 Mannhardt, op. cit. 267. Compare with the above the custom 

 in the Bohemian Riesengebirge and the rhymes uttered as the 

 various limbs and organs are struck (Zeits. des Vereins^ x. 332). 



2 Aston, Shinto, 190. Compare the use of similar instruments 

 in Bulgaria at Carnival (Arch. Religionsw. xi. 408). 



3 Farnell, i. 100. 



